Eclipse in Mission: Dispelling the Shadow of Our Idols

A silent crisis has been taking place for some time now: an ongoing eclipse in mission, whereby our understanding of what it is has been obscured by the idols of our Christian passions and biblical perspectives. Wherever that crisis has been perceived, energetic responses have been proposed and much has been done in the name of, and for the sake of, mission. However, those responses themselves have often overshadowed the problem of the identity of Christian mission. And so we remain in the darkness of understanding mission as we always have done. We even impose these understandings onto God--calling Him a ＂missionary＂ God--and we project our idols of ＂mission＂ onto the sacred Word. Here, then, is an uncomfortable but necessary critique of modern mission, and the ground from which it has grown. Here, too, is the proposition of a better basis for understanding what mission is, and for outworking it aright in all of our lives. By articulating a new paradigm for Christian mission, the eclipsed problem of mission in crisis will have been resolved, and the missional potential of a global church--dynamic with the very Spirit and presence of the living God--will be released.

Rob Goodwin lectures in Theology and Mission at the Theological College of Zimbabwe.